Shahla Atta's Family Says The Afghan Lawmaker Was Murdered, Though The Investigation is Ongoing

Afghans walk through a cemetery outside The the Kart-e-sakhi shrine in Kabul on December 19, 2013. Despite massive injection of foreign aid since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan remains desperately poor with some of the lowest living standards in the world. AFP PHOTO/Noorullah Shirzada (Photo credit should read Noorullah Shirzada/AFP/Getty Images)Source:
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The
family of Shahla Atta, an
Afghan lawmaker whose body was found in Kabul last Friday, claim that the former presidential hopeful was murdered. Family members called a press conference
Wednesday, where they announced they believed they had sufficient evidence to prove 48-year
old Atta did not die of natural causes, according to the Afghan news agency Khaama Press. Police have not yet announced the cause of death, and
an investigation is ongoing.

Atta,
who ran unsuccessfully for president in Afghanistan’s 2009 election, had served
as an independent legislator since 2005. She also ran the Atta Foundation—an organization
dedicated to providing support for women whose husbands are physically
disabled or dead. Although no cause of her death has officially been announced,
rumors immediately erupted tying her death to
excess alcohol consumption. Family members vigorously denounce such reports,
claiming Atta was targeted for being an outspoken female politician.

“Powerful
women since [sic] time have been subjugated as criminals on no grounds in a
patriarchal society,” the family wrote in a press statement announcing the
Wednesday conference in Kabul, “but we stand in solidarity with them, as we
stand for Shahla Ata.” The family claim they possess pictures of the crime
scene that attest to the nefarious nature of Atta’s death. They write:

We call
upon the government of Afghanistan including the president, and the police and
the US embassy to help us bring her the justice she rightly deserves like any
other civilian under a sovereign State.

Atta
was reportedly
a U.S. citizen, having spent many years living in the United States. She
never renounced her citizenship, and her five children allegedly still live in
the States. The police have not yet made any arrests, and Atta’s family have
not put forth an exact motive for murder beyond broadly referencing her gender
and political participation. The claims come at a time when, according to The Guardian, electoral quotas have ensured
that global female
political participation has increased exponentially. The percentage of female lawmakers has
nearly doubled over the past twenty years, according to the
Inter-Parliamentary Union.

But
in Afghanistan, political assassinations are not uncommon and women are
certainly not exempt. Last June, then-presidential election front-runner and
current Chief Executive Abdullah
Abdullah narrowly escaped death, when two bombs exploded outside a hotel
where he had just staged a political rally. Reuters reported six dead in the
Kabul blast. In 2012, Najia Siddiqi — acting head of the department of women’s
affairs in Laghman province — was shot
and killed by two assailants while traveling in a rickshaw.

Rule
of law is notoriously weak in Afghanistan. The Afghan National Police are
charged with what a recent New York Times headline called “The Hardest (and Most Important)
Job in Afghanistan.” The accompanying story recounts an
individual police officer’s attempts to battle off encroaching anarchy. The
police force, the Times points out,
are charged with both defeating the Taliban and gaining the loyalty and trust
of the citizenry. A fundamental dearth of security turns such quotidian
aspirations into Mission Impossible.

In
the force, corruption
is rampant and collaboration with the Taliban not
uncommon. At the start of this month, President Ashraf Ghani
dismissed 27 senior police officers, claiming many Afghan
police personnel had links to the country’s warlords. The move came as part of a larger
anti-corruption drive spearheaded by the new president, according to the BBC.
One Kabul-based reporter said at the time that many of the sacked officers had
in fact been awarded new positions.

The
United Nations Development Fund currently pays the wages of the Afghan police
force, a
situation that looks set to end within six months. The fund has been
plagued by suspicions of fraud and mismanagement, according to The Wall Street Journal, and the upcoming
deadline has sparked fears over the future operational efficiency of the police
force. Meanwhile, their current success rate leaves much to be desired. Last September,
the Times reported that seven
Afghan journalists had been killed so far that year; most of the killings remained
unsolved, and one of them had been committed by the police.

Shahla
Atta’s family may have to exercise patience: it could be a while before their questions
are answered, their demands fulfilled, or their claims rebutted.